Umut Özkirimli

Lecturer and Guest Professor

Umut is Professor of Political Science at CMES. He is also a Honorary Professor in Europe, Nationalism and Globalization at the Center for Modern European Studies (CEMES), University of Copenhagen; a Senior Fellow at Istanbul Policy Center (IPC), Sabanci University; and a Research Associate, LSEE (Research on South East Europe), The European Insitute, The London School of Economics. Previously, he has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Malmö and the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, and a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at The European University Institute, Florence. Umut has been a recurrent visitor of CMES since 2007. In addition to teaching and supervising, Umut is coordinating a project entitled “In Search of a Model for the Middle East: A Comparison of Turkish and Nordic Experiences” funded by the Swedish Research Council and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Research Interests

Umut has published widely in the areas of nationalism, multiculturalism, identity politics and social movements. His research interests cover a wide spectrum, from theories of and normative debates on nationalism to nationalisms in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, from the “Kurdish question” in Turkey to multiculturalism, radical right and Islamophobia in Europe. He is currently editing a book series on “Islam and Nationalism”(with Spyros A. Sofos) for Palgrave Macmillan, and working on the 3rd, revised and extended, edition of of his widely used textbook, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. He is also at the initial stage of planning and fundingraising for two other projects, one on the feasibility and desirability of an Alawite nation in Syria, the other on the future and possible implications of Rojava cantons in Kurdish Syria for the debates on postnationalism.